{"id":362743,"date":"2025-12-21T15:20:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T15:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/362743\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T15:20:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T15:20:09","slug":"will-jack-draper-pull-out-of-the-australian-open-rumours-are-swirling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/362743\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Jack Draper pull out of the Australian Open? Rumours are swirling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rumours are swirling over Jack Draper\u2019s<\/a> hopes of playing at the Australian Open<\/a>, with fears growing that the British No 1 may need to take more time away from the game as he recovers from an arm problem.<\/p>\n

Draper has not played a competitive match since he was forced to pull out of the US Open ahead of his second round match with an injury that has been troubling him for the second half of 2025.<\/p>\n

The left hander who will toast his 24th birthday on Monday was due to play in the UTS Grand Final in London earlier this month, but he was forced to withdraw from the event curated by coach Patrick Mouratoglou as he admitted he \u2018wasn\u2019t ready\u2019 to return.<\/p>\n

Draper has been working on his preparations for the new season at the LTA\u2019s National Tennis Centre in London, but it is unclear how much time he is spending on court ahead of a potential return in the United Cup team event in just over a week.<\/p>\n

Draper is due to team up with Emma Raducanu<\/a> in what would be a star-studded Great Britain team, but there is no confirmation that he is ready to play and the comments from his team captain, Tim Henman, did not give any more clues.<\/p>\n

More Tennis News<\/p>\n

Tim Henman issues Emma Raducanu and Jack Draper update ahead of United Cup campaign<\/a><\/p>\n

Jack Draper makes Emma Raducanu confession as he prepares to team up with British No 1<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201c[They are] moving in the right direction,\u201d Henman told the United Cup website. \u201cObviously, Jack had a very difficult time \u2026 he\u2019s building it up. He\u2019s got Jamie Delgado now in his corner. So, a lot of experience there.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s just got to keep working day in, day out to build it up so that he\u2019s ready to be on the match court.<\/p>\n

\u201cLikewise with Emma, she\u2019s been in Spain a bit with Francisco Roig, and she\u2019s again looking to make sure she puts in the necessary work so that she can be ready to hit the ground running in Perth because we\u2019re all aware of the matches we\u2019ve got.\u201d<\/p>\n

While there has been no official word from his camp, the lack of updates on Draper\u2019s condition and whether he is planning to travel to Australia has fuelled rumours in the British media that there may be a further delay in his return, which would rule him out of the first Grand Slam event of 2026.<\/p>\n

The Brit was initially due to compete in the MGM Macau Tennis Masters exhibition event, taking place on December 27 and 28, but he confirmed he was not playing in that event earlier this month.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview on The Tennis Podcast, Draper suggested he was making progress, as he looked ahead to 2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThe arm is getting better,\u201d he said. \u201cI started the year really well. Built off the form I had last year. I was playing a lot of matches, and I really felt like my game was developing every week and on all surfaces as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe clay was something that I always wanted to play well on. I hadn\u2019t yet proved it. Did well over the clay court season. But I did have a niggling arm pain from around Madrid time.<\/p>\n

\u201cAround Wimbledon and the French Open, it got quite painful, so I had to get it looked at. I had a bone injury in my humerus.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom there, I took a bit of time but wanted to get back for the US Open, the last Grand Slam of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recovery was going well, I had a scan in the States and it looked all good, but then the pain was just too much when I got to the US, so I had to come home and take it really seriously. Take some time out. But now I feel like I am in a really good place, and I\u2019m building up for hopefully 2026 being a great year.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Draper is forced to miss the Australian Open, he will be desperate to return to action by March, when the 1,000 ranking points he collected for winning the Indian Wells Masters in 2025 will drop off his total.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rumours are swirling over Jack Draper\u2019s hopes of playing at the Australian Open, with fears growing that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-362743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}